Read and Reflect
After completing the reading about Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers, my first reation was agreement with the Key Research Findings. I think that good teachers naturally ask questions and cue students to foster learning. We know that students demonstrate greater gains when we ask them higher level questions, rather than to simply recall information. We also know that students benefit from being presented with and organizing material in a variety of ways, such as via graphic organizers. I think that I have always asked questions to lead discussions in the direction I wanted them to go, as well as providing my students with cues when needed. I know that my greatest flaw in this area is not providing adequate "wait time". If students do answer, I tend to answer for them, which is counter-productive. Rather than learning that they need to figure it out, I think I gave them the comfort of not putting anyone on the spot and simply answering my own questions and moving on. This is something I know I need to work on. I also need to develop higher-level questions, and plan to ask questions at the beginning of a lesson rather than simply to review.
Glogster is fun!! I wasn't sure exactly what to make as I played around with the tool, but I was thinking that this would be a great page for our student council website (this is on my to-do list) to advertise a homecoming or spirit week, or some event. I think it would be great advertisement if we could upload images of students participating in dress up days, or modeling upcoming dress up days (since sometimes the students are very creative with these!) or even upload images from assemblies. Just thinking it through right now, but this is a great, user-friendly tool that would allow me or students to create pages. Presently this is a work-in-progress as all the details have not yet been determined, but it was an idea that would allow me to utilize this great site.
After completing the reading about Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers, my first reation was agreement with the Key Research Findings. I think that good teachers naturally ask questions and cue students to foster learning. We know that students demonstrate greater gains when we ask them higher level questions, rather than to simply recall information. We also know that students benefit from being presented with and organizing material in a variety of ways, such as via graphic organizers. I think that I have always asked questions to lead discussions in the direction I wanted them to go, as well as providing my students with cues when needed. I know that my greatest flaw in this area is not providing adequate "wait time". If students do answer, I tend to answer for them, which is counter-productive. Rather than learning that they need to figure it out, I think I gave them the comfort of not putting anyone on the spot and simply answering my own questions and moving on. This is something I know I need to work on. I also need to develop higher-level questions, and plan to ask questions at the beginning of a lesson rather than simply to review.
Apply and Reflect
http://procan01.edu.glogster.com/student-council-spirit-week/
Glogster is fun!! I wasn't sure exactly what to make as I played around with the tool, but I was thinking that this would be a great page for our student council website (this is on my to-do list) to advertise a homecoming or spirit week, or some event. I think it would be great advertisement if we could upload images of students participating in dress up days, or modeling upcoming dress up days (since sometimes the students are very creative with these!) or even upload images from assemblies. Just thinking it through right now, but this is a great, user-friendly tool that would allow me or students to create pages. Presently this is a work-in-progress as all the details have not yet been determined, but it was an idea that would allow me to utilize this great site.